Transparent Productivity As we move forward with technology, I expect that the next primary way to access your enterprise data will be thru an icon - It will be with you, will all your other things just in different capacities. On your iPhone, on your iPad, and an icon on your laptop. While you’re out doing the things you need to do, you can access work on the devices that are already with you. There are two factors at work here - When you want to work, and with what type interface. As carpenters have a tool box of appropriate tools, you’ll leverage the most desirable input methods when looking to work. You may only reference data on your smart phone, but then go back to your desktop to leverage peripherals, heavy data input, larger screen size, etc. Smart phones, tablets, laptops, desktops - these are vessels to the content, not the content themselves. In discussions I have had with Good Mobile Messaging in 2007, I expressed that I wanted a Mac version of their app - A sandboxed application that accessed my work email, calendar and contacts. - Perfect! As I traveled, I wanted the ability to just take my personal laptop to do the things that I want and need personally, but also to access my work too. Its not an option knowing that I would never want to allow the company that I work for, to come in and install anti-virus, firewalls, endpoint protection, VPN software, let alone all the office tools just to get email while I am away. But if you took that and shrunk it into a little app that sat on my desktop alongside my personal productivity tools, that only got in front of me when I wanted to get into the enterprise - that is a more desirable model. Just like it does in a sandbox on my mobile device. I don’t want Grandma’s birthday or my friend from High Schools bachelor party, stored on some Exchange server, backed up indefinitely in the vaults of the company that employs me, nor do they want NDA’d conversations about strategy on my MobileMe calendar. So maybe we have come far enough where desktop virtualization will allow us a different looking icon to link us into the office when we ready to get some work done, offering us our suite of productivity tools and access to all the files and applications necessary to do our job thru a pane of glass. I got that app, but it is in the form of a virtual session, thus allowing me full access to all my companies facilities on my personal platform BlackBerry and ActiveSync, for example, want to control the device, not just the data - which makes a lot of sense… to security people - but doesn’t make sense when an enterprise wants to cut back costs. So instead of competing for space in the employees pocket, or purse, why not go with what they have already. More people are carrying smart phones, as is, and are more likely to access work if it’s convenient. You don’t want to add a phone, voice and data plan for a device that will sit in the briefcase at home, while your resource is out and about. Just leverage the tools that they already have with them. Facts have proven that employees that have access to outside resources (pay bills online, check personal email, etc) are more prone to stay in the office and continue to get work done. So what is to say this wouldn’t be true when flipped the other way, if the company was always with you while you were running around, at the cafe, etc, what’s to say you wouldn’t be more prone to open the app and knock out a few emails as the ideas arrive, instead of waiting till Monday morning and face possibly losing that momentum. I look forward to the opportunity that I can pop in an out of the office electronically with my closest device to capture a brain dump while stuck in the laundromat and then back out to catch some YouTube clips.
